> Amongst people I know, Cupertino (which is in Santa Clara) is generally referred to as being in South Bay rather than the Bay Area.
People you know are delusional. The "Bay Area" includes the peninsula, south bay, east bay, and north bay. Some people throw in Santa Cruz, which might be a bit extreme, but I've never talked to anyone who lived there for an appreciable time period and didn't include Silicon Valley (and hence Cupertino).
> I've met a few people now who are contracted by Apple to work on their customer facing Apps.
You've met a couple of employees (or maybe contractors?), and you believe that they are representative of thousands of technical staff? That says far more about you than it does about anything else.
I met a person in San Jose who told me they were from the city, and I asked "Oh nice, me too! Which part are you from?" He named some unheard of district, and I kept asking questions to try to pinpoint where it was, and I found out he was actually from Palo Alto. That's extreme.
As someone who lives in the land of trees and windows (and grew up in the land of the freeway) I count Santa Cruz as part of the Bay Area, there are enough commuters running up and down CA-17 to make it count.
People in San Francisco who are going on the commute on the 101 don't say "I'm going to the Bay Area today" - they say "I'm going to South Bay today".
People always orient around themselves. People living in Cupertino or Mountainview might say they live in the "Bay Area" but for people living further North in San Francisco or Oakland, they would consider themselves to be living in the "Bay Area" and folk further South to be living in the "South Bay".
> People in San Francisco who are going on the commute on the 101 don't say "I'm going to the Bay Area today" - they say "I'm going to South Bay today".
Of course not; they're already in the Bay Area. People in Palo Alto don't say "I'm going to the Bay Area" when they drive to SF, and people on the Upper West Side don't say "I'm going to New York today" when they take the A train downtown, either. I honestly can't tell whether or not you're trolling, at this point.
Actually I thought you were trolling by saying people I know are delusional because they refer to Cupertino as being in South Bay (which is obviously just a subregion of the Bay Area). Another poster is getting upset because I wrote "the 101" instead of "101". Christ.
With regards to your other point, no, of course I don't think all Apple engineers are second tier, but I do feel that since Bertrand Serlet left, OS X engineering has languished.
Given that I know some competent - but not great - engineers who work at Apple (and they happen to commute) I wonder if the culture at Apple today is more about hiring competent engineers to implement a roadmap, rather than hiring great engineers and letting them loose to "think different".
None of us objected to you saying that people refer to Cupertino as being in the South Bay. What we objected to was the second half of that sentence: "... rather than the Bay Area." As written, this implies that the people in question believe that the South Bay is not part of the Bay Area, which is delusional. Maybe you didn't intend to say that, but that's what you wrote, and what everyone responded to.
Regarding "great" vs. "competent" engineers: every company needs a mix of them. There aren't enough truly great engineers for even just Apple or Google to be entirely staffed by them, much less all of the other companies out there. So everyone needs to make do with merely competent engineers in some roles.
You mentioned in a sibling comment that the engineers in question "contract at Apple"; here you wonder if Apple is merely "hiring competent engineers to implement a roadmap". But that's exactly what all companies hire contractors for, whereas great engineers who are "let loose to think different" are typically permanent employees.
You're right, there aren't enough great engineers out there. I'm just wondering if the direction of the company is an impediment to hiring the best.
Check out the reviews of Pages 5, which has been dumbed down. If the vision and future for OS X is to turn it into a Fisher Price OS for the masses, I can see why a great engineer would prefer to work elsewhere and tackle bigger challenges.
People you know are delusional. The "Bay Area" includes the peninsula, south bay, east bay, and north bay. Some people throw in Santa Cruz, which might be a bit extreme, but I've never talked to anyone who lived there for an appreciable time period and didn't include Silicon Valley (and hence Cupertino).
> I've met a few people now who are contracted by Apple to work on their customer facing Apps.
You've met a couple of employees (or maybe contractors?), and you believe that they are representative of thousands of technical staff? That says far more about you than it does about anything else.